Mrs. Rowe’s acquaintance with persons of fashion had taught her all the accomplishments of good-breeding, and elegance of behaviour, and without formality or affectation she practised in the most distant solitude, all the address and politeness of a court.

She had the happiest command over her passions, and maintained a constant calmness of temper, and sweetness of disposition, that could not be ruffled by adverse accidents.  She was in the utmost degree an enemy to ill-natured satire and detraction; she was as much unacquainted with envy, as if it had been impossible for so base a passion to enter into the human mind.  She had few equals in conversation; her wit was lively, and she expressed her thoughts in the most beautiful and flowing eloquence.

When she entered into the married state, the highest esteem and most tender affection appeared in her conduct to Mr. Rowe, and by the most gentle and obliging manner, and the exercise of every social and good natured virtue, she confirmed the empire she had gained over his heart.  In short, if the most cultivated understanding, if an imagination lively and extensive, a character perfectly moral, and a soul formed for the most exalted exercises of devotion, can render a person amiable, Mrs. Rowe has a just claim to that epithet, as well as to the admiration of the lovers of poetry and elegant composition.

* * * * *

The Revd.  Dr. Thomas Yalden.

This Gentleman was born in the city of Exeter, and the youngest of six sons of Mr. John Yalden of Sussex.  He received his education at a Grammar-school, belonging to Magdalen-College in Oxford. [A]In the year 1690 he was admitted a commoner of Magdalen-Hall, under Mr. John Fallen, who was esteemed an excellent tutor, and a very great master of logic, and the following year he was chosen scholar of Magdalen-College.  Here he became a fellow-pupil with the celebrated Mr. Addison and Dr. Henry Sacheverel, and early contracted a particular friendship with those two gentlemen.  This academical affection Mr. Addison preserved not only abroad in his travels, but also on his advancement to considerable employments at home, and kept the same easy and free correspondence to the very last, as when their fortunes were more on a level.  This preservation of affection is rendered more singular, by Mr. Yalden’s having espoused a very opposite interest to that of Mr. Addison, for he adhered to the High-Church party, and was suspected of an attachment to an exiled family, for which he afterwards was brought into very great trouble.

In the year 1700 he was admitted actual and perpetual fellow of Magdalen-College, and qualified himself the next year, by taking orders, as the founder’s statutes require.  After his admission he received two public marks of favour from that society:  The first was a presentation to a living in Warwickshire, consistent with his fellowship; and the other, his being elected moral philosophy-reader, an office for life, endowed with a handsome stipend and peculiar privileges.